


The Columbarium

by tholos



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Dealing With Loss, F/M, Family, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29163483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tholos/pseuds/tholos
Summary: Two names and two lives after vanishing from home, Erandur reunites with what is left of his parents.
Relationships: Erandur/Original Nord Character
Kudos: 9





	The Columbarium

They had found his parents' resting place, a squalid columbarium tucked away in a dusty side street of Windhelm's Grey Quarter. Erandur couldn't remember if he grew up here, or if his parents moved here after he was gone - or perhaps they were from some meager village nearby, and their remains had been transferred for lack of ritual accommodations. Regardless, after seventy years, here they stood. Two small copper urns jammed side-by-side in a cramped recess carved into the uncaring grey stone, gazing down upon their lost son as he knelt in supplication before them.

"Would you want to bring their urns with us?" Bergljot prompted gently. "Make a shrine for them at home?"

Erandur shook his head, quite taken aback by the idea. "I couldn't possibly," he said. "They had their own lives. They had other children, who may be minding them here. This is where they chose to be interred."

"Ástin mín, look at this place," Bergljot said, and he refused to do so, keeping his eyes trained shamefully on the bleak stone floor. After several moments she began to caress his shoulders, and continued, "You were their child, too. You were part of their lives, too. Even after you were gone."

He thought she was referencing beyond himself alone. It comforted him slightly. "I'm sorry," he said, daring to lift his head. "Your sister..."

"You see my point, then," she smiled.

"But I chose to leave them behind. Begga, of my own volition, I fled the loving arms of my mothers."

Her loose hug around his back became a tight embrace. "You were just a boy, Erandur. Thrown into impossible circumstances."

"I rejected them," Erandur protested. 

"They wouldn't have rejected their young, vanished son. Don't you think they would have mourned you? Kept looking out for you until the very end?"

Finally he didn't know how to respond. His throat squeezed shut. The dark room fell into quiet, until Erandur dimly realized he was sniffling, and Bergljot was humming as she smoothed her large hands over his hair. 

With a kiss to her temple he detached from her, rising to his feet. He pressed his face closely against the two urns until their dull sheen softened into one rosy shape before his eyes. Warm, radiant, alive in their grief, filling him with their grace, luminous with love for him.

"I can't take them from this place," he said. "But you help me believe, as you always do. I won't hide from them anymore."


End file.
